The Institute of Research on Combustion (IRC) is one of the partners of the research project Waste2Fuels 'Sustainable production of next generation biofuels from waste streams' that has been funded under the European Union's research and innovation program Horizon 2020 under the grant agreement no. 654623. The project is coordinated by the Spanish company IRIS Advanced Engineering with the participation of 20 partners from 8 countries, among these the 'Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica dei Materiali e della Produzione Industriale' of the University of Napoli Federico II. The context of the project includes the research on the production of sustainable biofuels that generate a clear and net greenhouse gas saving without negatively impacting on biodiversity and land use according to the main EU objectives. Main goals of the project are:
- mapping and analyzing the available agro-food waste (AFW) streams in Europe as feedstock for bio-butanol production.
- converting AFW biomass to bio-butanol, developing methods and technologies that significantly improve the conversion efficiency, the specific productivity, and the reliability of an integrated ABE fermentation process reactor system.
- optimizing and demonstrating novel integrated ethanol to butanol catalytic conversion processes and valorizing post-process waste streams recovering energy and added value by-products.
- demonstrating the feasibility of the produced bio-butanol to be burned in industrial systems and transportation to assess its eco-toxicological properties and to design the industrial up-scale of the technologies.
- performing environmental and economic sustainability assessments through life cycle and cost analysis (LCA and LCC).
Researchers at IRC contribute to develop novel technologies for the pre-treatment and the enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic AFW as well as novel catalytic processes for the conversion of ethanol into butanol.
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